Texarkana to Loretta's Place

Left Texarkana this morning as soon as everyone was up. I don't even think breakfast was served..it was get a shower and get moving. Found a site last night, swimmingholes.org and it gave us the idea to break the trip up, we'd stop in Hot Springs and have a swim....well, we drove to just outside of Benton Ark and see a sign for this place http://www.magicsprings.com/
Hit the exit and the sign says 20.something miles to Magic Springs....luckily, we are enterprising parents. We come barreling down a hill, see a creek running lazily along and under this bridge we're about to cross over....and Tracey makes the call...."that's a good spot". In another amazing stroke of luck, on the other side of the creek is a pulloff and a gravel spot to park "the flying hanburger". So we make a quick U-turn and the four of us are up to our ankles in fresh water, crystal clear and actually cold. (Obviously not from the hot springs up the road). There was a great area where the creek was held up, creating a little pool, complete with fish of some sort (Tiger Fish is what Grey says they are..and while he's pretty smart, does he really know what fish are in streams in Middle o nowhere Arkansas?) and flat skipping stones. The pool drained down toward the bridge and the current was pretty strong, but Mom and Molly plunged thru anyway. We skipped stones, collected some great looking shale rocks.....souvenir's for their friends. We stayed as long as we could take the bugs. Then off to Graceland.

Graceland is a pretty amazing place. What's really amazing is the earning power of "The King". He collected $15 for parking, $68 to look around his crib, and his glasses and a teddy bear, complete with pink leather fetched another $32....I hadn't spent money that fast since High School Musical on Ice. The over the top nature of everything was something to see and it's quite impressive to turn a corner and see all of his lifes work and accomplishments.
Our $100 tour had us out of there within about an hour. Of course we had to stop at the gift shop...my favorite thing.

We joked:
Parking at Graceland $15.00
Tour of Graceland $68.00
Your daughter naming the RV, Priceless.

After Graceland, we were back on the road. Next Stop was Lorretta Lynn's Dude Ranch and we had a 150 plus miles to get there...which the flying hanburger soaked up nicely.

At some point in the trip, we crossed the mighty Mississippi again on this trip and I have to say, she seemed to be flooding. Since I haven't even thought about the news for last 9 days, no idea if it is flooding, or if that's "normal", but the water was high and fields were flooded.

As we've rounded the curve in Austin, both Tracey and I have felt the pull of "reality" back home. Our "road time" has been pretty heavy these past two days. Luckily we've found a nice place here at Loretta's. We're up on a hill, nice view at sunset and it's cool, not as many bugs. We have a short drive to Gatlinburg TN tomorrow and then two more days of hanging out with the kids.


Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!!